74 Rebecca Roeder
- Methods and Setting
2.1 Physical and Linguistic Setting
Data collection was conducted in Lansing, the capitol of Michigan, located
in the south central part of the state—about 90 miles from the larger cities of
Grand Rapids and Detroit, and only several hours from Chicago. Michigan
falls in the center of the dialect area de¿ ned by the Atlas of North American
English (Labov et al. 2006) as the Inland North. The most distinctive regional
speech feature that has been discovered in this area is the sound change in
progress known as the Northern Cities Shift (NCS). This shift, illustrated
schematically in Figure 3.1, is a vowel change that affects six vowels and has
been under way among Anglos in urban areas across the northern-central
United States for 35 years or more.
The status of the NCS as a chain shift is under some debate, and the
diachronic order of change and direction of movement of several of the vow-
els involved are also disputed. However, a number of researchers, includ-
ing Labov (1994: 195), accept the hypothesis that /æ/ was the ¿ rst vowel to
shift—the catalyst that began the chain reaction. In any case, shifted /æ/
is now perhaps the most distinctive feature of the NCS. In advanced NCS
Figure 3.1 The Northern Cities Shift (based on Labov 1994: 191).